Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 21:49:28 -0500 (EST)
From: Gerald Levy <glevy-AT-pratt.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Architectural Design and Capitalism


Shane Mage wrote:

 
> That's not how I remember--and therefore understand-- Lenin's famous
> epigram. What I recall is that Lenin, asked by a journalist "what is this
> socialism you are building?" replied "socialism is soviet power plus
> electrification of the whole country."

The quote I cited before ("communism is the power of electricity") was, as
I can recall, from a speech that Lenin gave during the same period of
time. It could have been on the occasion of the public announcement of
the electrification program (I don't have my copy of the _CW_ in my apt.
so I can't check now). 

I agree that the difference in formulation is quite interesting and
revealing.

> Only by providing electric power to every house in every
> village over the immense expanse of the Soviet Union could the small
> proletarian minority (remember, this was 1921-1922) expect to raise the
> peasant masses from their deep cultural backwardness, isolation,
> illiteracy, superstition, raise them to the level of conscious and
> voluntary participants in a collectivist effort of historic scope.

Yes, I think that was part of the motivation for the electrification
program. It was also a precondition, along with the development of other
aspects of the infrustructure such as communications and transportation,
for industrialization. Yet, the industrialization debates (which centered
around the question of how to finance industrialization) took place after
Lenin's death.

>From Lenin's perspective, though, the key to building socialism and
maintaining Soviet power was the extension of the international
revolution, most notably to Germany and the rest of Central Europe. It was
believed that an international socialist commonwealth could be able to
assist the USSR in its prospects for overcoming the economic backwardness
inherited from Tsarist history. Of course, that perspective went out the
window with Stalin's "socialism in a single country."

> The issue of electrification is still very much on the agenda, in the form
> of the "energy problem."  And I would say, in all seriousness, that the
> central historical mission of socialism is *solar electrification of the
> whole planet*.

What about wind and other alternative energy sources (including nuclear
power NOT)?

Jerry



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